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Three recent earthquakes, on Thursday and Saturday morning in Japan and Saturday night in Ecuador,  have gotten lots of attention because of the great destruction, reports the CNN.

According to U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist, Paul Caruso it's early to tell whether the earthquakes are connected.

"Usually we don't think earthquakes are connected across the ocean," Caruso said, but there's ongoing research in "remote triggering," the idea that a big quake can cause another quake a long distance away.

As the CNN reports, both quakes occurred in the horseshoe-shaped area the National Geographic Society defines as "a string of volcanoes and sites of seismic activity, or earthquakes, around the edges of the Pacific Ocean."

In terms of power, the Ecuador earthquake was almost 16 times stronger than the Saturday morning quake in Japan. Ecuador was hit by a magnitude-7.8 quake, Japan by a magnitude-7.0 quake.

The Saturday quake is the deadliest to hit Ecuador since March 1987 when a 7.2-magnitude temblor killed 1,000 people, according to the USGS.

Quakes with a magnitude between 7.0 and 7.9 occur about 15 times a year, according to information collected by the USGS over the decades.